Charles Bedaux

Charles Eugène Bedaux
Bedaux with his film crew in Canada in 1934
Born	26 October 1886 Paris, France
Died	18 February 1944 Miami, Florida
Occupation	Production Engineer and Management Consultant
Spouse(s)	Fern

Charles Eugène Bedaux (26 October 1886 – 18 February 1944) was one of the most colorful millionaires of the early twentieth century. Friends with British and Dominion royalty and Nazis alike, he amassed a fortune developing and implementing the work measurement aspect of scientific management and was a management consultant, big game hunter and explorer.

Charles Bedaux was born in the Charenton-le-Pont commune of Paris, France. In 1903, he dropped out of Collège Jean-Baptiste Say in Paris and worked a series of menial jobs before befriending Henri Ledoux, a successful pimp from the infamous Pigalle district. Ledoux taught Bedaux lessons on proper dress, confidence and street-fighting, but when Ledoux was murdered in 1906, Bedaux moved to the United States, where he became a United States citizen, married, and had a son, Charles Emile Bedaux (1909–1993). He would later claim in interviews to have worked as a restaurant bottle-washer, a sandhog, and at the New Jersey Worsted Mills in Hoboken.

Bedaux was one of the leading contributors in the field of work measurement or labor measurement, one strand of the scientific management movement's influence. In this, he was strongly influenced by F.W. Taylor's book Shop Management, particularly Taylor's time study practices, and Charles E. Knoeppel's writings on industrial layout and routing.